Lots to be proud of

Michelle Obama, wife of Democrat Presidential Candidate B. Hussein Obama said that this is the first time in her adult life that she has been proud of America.

Michael Kinsley quipped that a gaffe is when a politician says what he really thinks. In this case, it’s what happens when an elite Democratic politician’s wife says what a significant portion of the party’s base really believes to be the truth: America is more a source of shame than pride.

And after decades of finding nothing in America worthy of pride, it was her husband winning some primaries that finally inspired pride in Michelle Obama?

Personally, I am proud of America and proud to be an American on a daily basis. There is a lot to be proud of as an American:

• America won the Cold War and brought down the Soviet Union without firing a shot.
• America built the Space Shuttles and flew them a hundred times or so, landed rovers on Mars, and studied the reaches of the universe with the Hubble telescope.
• The Berlin Wall fell, due in large part to American pressure.
• Michelle has lived through decades of peaceful election cycles under the rule of law, which have brought about change, both good and bad.
• Michelle has witnessed and benefited from unbelievable advances in technology, communications, science, and medicine pioneered by American entrepreneurs.
• Patients lives have been improved and extended by American pharmaceutical companies which have flourished under the best economic system in the world.
• What about every Memorial Day? Every Veterans Day? Every Independence Day? Every Medal of Honor ceremony?
• Has Michelle never attended a welcome-home celebration for our troops?
• Does her liberal disdain for the military prevent her from taking pride in the honorable service of our soldiers and the sacrifice they make around the world to bring freedom to those who are oppressed by evil tyrants like Saddam Hussein?
• Has Michelle never attended a naturalization ceremony where hundreds of new Americans raised their hands to swear an oath of allegiance to this land of liberty, embracing the opportunity that America offers?
• Did Michelle not find any reason to be proud when millions of Americans rallied to help victims of the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia?
• Or when citizens rushed to their churches, the Salvation Army, and the Red Cross to assist victims of Hurricane Katrina?
• How could America's response to the attacks of 9/11 not make her proud? Only a heart of stone could be unmoved by the strength, valor, and determination displayed in New York and Washington DC after that horrific attack.

Michelle Obama's own success is evidence of the opportunity available to every American, which ought to be another source of price. Michelle has achieved enormous professional success, political influence, and personal acclaim in America. Ivy League educated, she has been recognized by Essence magazine as one of the 25 World's Most Inspiring Women, and named one of the "Harvard 100" most influential alumni. She has had an amazingly blessed life, which flies in the face of her ungrateful rhetorical claim that America does not offer opportunity.

Anyone who has trouble finding numerous reasons to be proud of America has no business in the White House.

If you are reading this, please leave a comment telling me why YOU are proud of America.

Kids are a blessing

I hear a lot of really jaded people complaining about what a bother kids are.

After all, they take up your time and money, and there are a lot of other things you would rather be doing. You know, things for yourself. Instead of raising kids, you could be going out to eat a lot more, seeing all of the wonderful movies that Hollywood makes, staying out late at the bar, or playing a lot more golf. Yeah, that would make life so much more rich and purposeful.

Meanwhile, I am home with my three boys. They like to play games, and they beat me if I don't watch out. Don't underestimate Mark just because he is only six. I can't tell you how many fun evenings we have spent playing Blokus, or Qwirkle, or Rat-a-tat-cat.

Mark and Caleb like me to read to them, as well. We finished the second book in C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia last week, and started in on the third. They love the movie, but a while back, one of them said, "Wow, dad, the book is a lot better than the movie." I read the books when I was a kid, but I'm finding a lot more depth in them now, re-reading them as an adult. If I ever forget to read a chapter, they remind me.

We gather around the kitchen table and do our Bible Study Fellowship lessons together. We are studying Matthew this year. Last week we read about Jesus asking Peter the central question of life: "Who do you say that I am?" It is the greatest joy I could experience to hear them answer in faith, as Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."

There are many moments which make a parent's job worthwhile. This morning, Caleb brought us a piece of paper cut into a heart shape, on which he had written:

Dear Mom & Dad,

Happy Valentine's Day, the day of great love.

You are a wonderful sight to me, being my parents.

You are one of the people I like to be with.

I will love you forever and ever.

Thank you for keeping me safe all these years you had me.

Your Son,

Caleb

I wouldn't trade that for fifty years of seeing movies and hanging out in bars.

A gift from the heart

Valentine's Day, Hallmark's favorite holiday, is really not one of my favorites. As far as I can tell, it was a holiday made up by the greeting card and flower industry for the purpose of obligating people to buy stuff.

I have a different way of celebrating Valentine's Day -- something I believe that Saint Valentine, the Christian martyr who restored sight and hearing to the daughter of his jailor before being beheaded for refusing to denounce Christ, would find more fitting.

Each Valentine's Day that I am able to, I give blood. I've been doing that since I was twenty. Of course that is not the only time during the year that I give blood, and some years I can't do it exactly on February 14 because I'm not feeling well, or it falls on a Sunday, or I'm not elgible yet.

I have given thirteen gallons of blood so far -- typically once every two months. I don't know who has benefitted from any one of those 104 units, but it is a simple thing that can save lives. Only about 10 percent of the population gives blood regularly. This Valentine's Day, you ought to think about starting to give a gift from the heart.

No Giant

Moments after the Giants upset the Patriots on Sunday night, my dad and I were wondering how Hillary would capitalize on the win. We were both quite sure that she would claim the mantle of the winning Giants. Of course, if her adopted hometown team had lost, she would not have mentioned it. It is odd for Hillary to be seeking to be seen as the underdog or the long shot. She came into this election as the Presumptive President Elect, and if she is now the underdog it is because she botched the job and squandered her seemingly insurmountable lead.

CNN recaps Monday night on Letterman:

That rough, husky tone to New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's voice didn't come from the campaign trail.

"Every New Yorker has a sore throat after last night," Clinton told talk-show host David Letterman during her appearance Monday on "The Late Show." She said she had been rooting for the New York Giants while watching the Super Bowl in a Minneapolis sports bar.

Clinton said she was modeling her campaign for the Democratic nomination for president on the Giants' last-minute, 17-14 victory over the undefeated New England Patriots.

"I took a lot of heart from that, Dave," said Clinton, who is neck-and-neck in many polls with rival Barack Obama on the eve of the 22-state nomination contest. "The fourth quarter before Super Tuesday, you've got to keep going."

Hey Hillary -- you are no Giant.

Marketing

The Super Bowl advertisements are always hyped incredibly as being at least as good as the game, and maybe better. I am sure that the networks who want to charge $2.7 million for a 30 second spot are mainly responsible for the hype.

I was entirely underwhelmed by the ads.

The talking spot was pretty good, and we all laughed at the Doritos mouse trap.

But a lot of them just didn't make any sense. Using sex to sell stuff has been a standard practice forever, and selling an image or a promise that some product will make you cool is a time-tested marketing ploy as well. Humor is a common tool to make ads memorable, but I didn't think that many of the ads were all that funny. Some I couldn't even figure out what they were advertising. What the heck is Under Armour? I couldn't tell if it was deodorant or adult diapers or what? There was one with two stereotypically asian pandas which was not only offensive, it was also ineffective because I have no idea what they were advertising. The Bud Light ad with Bill Ferrell was picked as the forth best by CNN, but I thought it was horrid. The moment he started talking about putting sweat into beer he lost me. I've never seen one of his movies, and it is pretty safe to say that I won't any time soon. And I don't think I'll ever eat a pistachio again in my life.

So was it just this year, or are the advertisements that bad all the time?

Will the real executive please stand up?

It has been 48 years since a sitting Senator has been elected President. Since then, each and every President has either been a former Governor or Vice President.

Our current President, George W. Bush was governor of Texas.
The Presumptive First Lady Elect, Bill Clinton, was governor of Arkansas.
George HW Bush was VP under the great Ronald Reagan for eight years.
Obama's hero, Ronald Reagan was governor of California.
The Hapless Jimmy Carter was governor of Georgia.
Ford (who was never elected President or VP) was appointed Nixon's VP.
Nixon was VP under Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Johnson was VP under Kennedy.
That takes us back to 1960 when JFK, sitting Senator from Taxachusetts, was voted President.

There is a good reason for this clear preference of the voter.

Governors, Presidents, and Vice Presidents are part of the Executive branch of government, while Senators are Legislators. Congress sets budgets and makes laws, while Governors and Presidents run the government. The two skill sets are very different, and it is hard to know how much value experience as a legislator has in being an executive.

So you think that the public likes Legislators better than Executives? The media loves to discuss how unpopular the President is right now, but George Bush beats the approve/disapprove spread of Congress by twenty points.

So, which of the front runners in the current election has executive experience?

Hillary has seven years experience as a carpetbagging Senator from New York. She will surely try to claim that she should get credit for riding the coat-tails of her husband into the Arkansas Governor's Mansion and then on to the White House. By that criteria, Laura Bush ought to be equally qualified to be our next President. Ah, but Hillary was actively involved in policy-making during Clinton's term, you know, White Water, the health care debacle, Vince Foster, and so on. She was, in effect, co-president. If that were really true, the Constitutional term limit ought to exclude Hillary from being elected again. And if Hillary wants us to consider her accomplishments as co-president, she needs to release the records of what she did in that position. Doesn't it only stand to reason that if she wants credit for the experience she claims, we ought to be able to scrutinize her record and determine if it demonstrates the kind of leadership we want in a President? Every other candidate's record is public. Shouldn't she be eager to let us marvel at the brilliance of her tenure as First Lady? She has been asked to provide those records, and claimed that they are sealed in the National Archives until 2012. It turns out that when Bill Clinton was busy packing up the silverware, pardoning hundreds of convicted felons, and otherwise preparing to vacate the White House, he appointed two people to handle the archiving of the records from his term, including those relating to Hillary. Those two people put the records into the National Archive with instructions to not release them until 2012. Those two people were Hillary Clinton and Sandy Berger. Maybe the records are in Hillary's underpants.

B. Hussein Obama can't even claim proximity to executive experience. He has been a legislator, serving three years in the US Senate and eight years in the Illinois State Senate. He makes Hillary's padded resume look robust. He will surely try to spin his lack of experience into a positive, presenting himself as "a new, fresh face." But in the long, brutal battle to the White House, being able to point to experience of actually running something would be a tremendous advantage, and he just doesn't have it. Name just one major accomplishment. Can't do it, huh?

John McCain has served twice as long in the US Congress as Hillary and Obama combined. Compared to either of them, he is a heavyweight. The voters might like McCain’s record on national security, or Hillary's health care proposal, or Obama's oratory prowess, but not a one of them has any record running anything.

Then there is Mitt Romney. All his life he has been running things. He is most often noted as the governor of Massachusetts, where he turned a $3 billion deficit into a $700 million surplus, primarily by cutting spending. After the unrestrained spending of Bush and Clinton, this is a real positive. While Obama was experimenting with drugs at his high school in Hawaii, Romney was Vice President of Bain & Company, a management consulting firm in Boston. Romney left that position to co-found Bain Capital, a private equity investment firm which he ran for 14 years. During that time, the internal rate of return on realized investments of his company was an astonishing 114%. Warren Buffet is turning green with envy. Meanwhile, Bain & Company was floundering in his absence. They brought him back, and he turned the company around dramatically, returning it from the brink of financial collapse to profitability in one year without resorting to layoffs. Romney served as President and CEO of the 2002 Olympic Games. When Romney took this position in 1999, the event was running $379 million short of its revenue benchmark, plagued by corruption, and facing a scaleback due to lack of funds. During his term, the Games faced additional challenges due to security concerns arising from the 9/11 attacks, just months before the event. In spite of the initial fiscal shortfall and these increased security costs, the Games ended up with a $100 million profit. Romney donated his $825 thousand salary to charity. Romney has repeatedly demonstrated his ability to run things, which is the most crucial skill for a President. This sets him apart from the rest of the field, and clearly makes him not only the candidate with the best ideas and policy positions, but the candidate with the best qualifications for the job.

McCain, reverting to his habit of adopting the rhetoric of the left, uses anti-business slurs to criticize Romney as "managing for profit." Senator, don't you realize that America is great because people actually produce things and make a profit, not just sit around and pass bills?

Stimulus

The "Economic Stimulus Package" being rammed through Congress today might better be called "The Pay Voters to Re-elect Me Bill."

Thank goodness we have Congress to rescue us as the economy teeters precariously on the brink of less aggressive growth. Before it is over, you can count on the Democrats to load up the bill with more spending items which would not pass on their own merit.

The "Stimulus Package" is founded on one of the great ideas which brought down the Soviet Union: the notion that the centralized government has a big panel of buttons and dials before it, that simply need to be manipulated in the proper sequence in order to "jump start" or "stimulate" the economy.

The best thing Congress could do for the economy is get out of its way. Make the tax cuts permanent, cut government spending way back by eliminating all spending items outside of the scope of the Federal Government as specified in the Constitution, cutting corporate taxes, reducing regulation, and letting the free market generate wealth without the encumbrance of an overreaching government.

Will it happen? Not a chance. So you might as well send me my $600 check.

Why not Huckabee?

I have gotten a number of inquiries in response to my endorsement of Mitt Romney. Most of them are of the form: "Why are you not supporting [some other candidate]?"

Liberals tend to ask why I am not supporting John McCain. That fact speaks for itsself.

But by far the most common response was "Why are you not supporting Mike Huckabee?"

I like Mike Huckabee. I think that he has brought a lot of interest to the race, and has had a positive impact on the debates and the candidates, forcing them to raise issues which might never have come up if he was not present. He is smart, eloquent, funny, and says a lot of the right things.

However, his record is not nearly as stellar as his rhetoric. Based on what he actually did as governor of Arkansas, it is hard to describe him as a conservative. Conservatism is based on principles of limited government, the rule of law, and seperation of powers. Huckabee seems to see government as the solution to every problem.

Huckabee's economic policy was best described as populist. As governor of Arkansas, Huckabee repeatedly increased or expanded the sales tax; hiked the corporate income tax; imposed an income-tax surcharge on individuals and domestic and foreign corporations; raised the tax on gasoline and diesel fuel; taxed admission to theme parks and other tourist activities; taxed snuff, cigarettes, mixed drinks, private clubs and retail sales of beer; and so on. Now, in fairness to Huck, part of the tax increases were forced due to a court order to balance the budget and increase school funding. But a large part was used to increase the wealth redistribution programs that liberals love so much.

Huckabee is not only weak on foreign policy, he has said some dangerously ignorant things on the subject, leading me to question the wisdom of putting him in charge of the State Department and the US Military. Huckabee's talk about the War on Terror sounds a lot like Bill Clinton's policy during his eight years: If we are nice to them and talk with them and appease them, they will be nice back to us. It was disasterously misguided then, and it is even moreso now. Read this article as an example.

Huckabee's record on illegal immigration is also wrongheaded. As governor, Huckabee supported government-funded scholarships for illegal immigrants. To be very clear about what this means, Mike Huckabee not only wants people who are breaking the law by being in this country to be able to attend state universities, he wants to force law-abiding taxpayers to subsidize their tuition.

The case of rapist and murderer Wayne DuMond who was released from Arkansas prison with Huckabee's approval, and went on to kill two more women, has gotten some attention, but it is not the only case. Huckabee earned a reputation among Arkansas criminals as an easy mark: if you get a pastor to vouch for you, Governor Huckabee will pardon you.

Huckabee's Christianity is his strongest selling point. I appreciate his boldness and unequivocal answers to questions about evolution and his faith in God. However, it seems to me that Huckabee fails to grasp the distinction between Christian principles applied by individuals and the policy of a nation's government. Huckabee applies principles of grace, forgiveness, and charity by pardoning violent criminals, subsidizing college educations for lawbreakers, and dialoging with terrorists.

In a number of cases, Huckabee talked about "forgiveness" as he pardoned criminals. Aren't Christians supposed to forgive? Seventy times seven and all. But Huckabee is not the one who needs to forgive a murderer or rapist, because he was not the one who was wronged. Forgiveness means that I decide to not hold the fact that you hurt me against you. It does not mean that all consequences are removed. That was a key mistake in the impeachment of President Clinton: liberals in the media kept saying "Shouldn't we forgive President Clinton?" As if forgiveness meant that the consequences specified by the law would no longer apply. The job of a President or Governor is to uphold the law and protect society, not to act like a priest dispensing forgiveness.

Huckabee appealed to the idea of charity to support his policy of subsidizing the college tuition of illegal immigrants. This is not much different from liberals who want us to be beholden to their kindness and generosity for funding wealth redistribution programs. The problem is that generosity and charity ought to be with your own money, not with someone else's.

I wouldn't mind having Mike Huckabee as a pastor. I think I would enjoy sitting down and having lunch with him and discussing various topics. I'd happily go to hear him speak on current issues or on spiritual topics. But I don't think that he would make a good President.

"None of the above" isn't an option

This is the moment you have been waiting for. The historic announcement, anxiously awaited with hushed anticipation, of my endorsement for President.

I've got to start out by saying that there is no candidate who is 100% to my liking.

But some are significantly better than others. There are several candidates who I seriously considered supporting, most notably Huckabee and Thompson.

Huckabee is an interesting candidate. His Christian principles appeal to me a lot, and the guy is very likeable, funny, and eloquent. But his policies on taxes, spending, crime, immigration, and foreign policy convince me that he is not the right person to lead our nation. He staked a lot on winning South Carolina, but couldn't pull it off. In addition, he has failed to attract voters from outside the evangelical Christian community, so I don't think that he could win the election.

Thompson, on the other hand, is a true blue conservative. His positions are spot-on, across the board. From taxes to immigration to foreign policy, I can't think of anyone better grounded in conservative principles of limited government and separation of powers. Unfortunately, I don't expect him to still be in the race by March 5 when Texans have our primary. He has yet to win a primary, or come close for that matter. I believe that people gave up on him too soon, and for all the wrong reasons, due largely to media influence. We criticized Bill Clinton for being too slick. Fred's downfall was not being slick enough.

There are also a number of candidates who I believe would be particularly harmful to elect President. At the top of that list, of course, would be the two Democrat candidates, Mrs. Bill Clinton and B. Hussein Obama. The good news is that I don't consider either of them to be electable. Neither one has any experience actually running anything. Both are real rookies with just a few years in the Senate, making them some of the least qualified candidates in recent history. Hillary points out that she spent 8 years in the White House. Yeah, well so did Clinton's pastry chef. Obama can't even claim proximity to executive leadership. Hillary is dearly beloved by those Democrat party loyalists who thought that Bill Clinton was god on earth. This may be a large enough block of voters to secure the nomination, but it won't carry her to victory in November. Among the general voting public, Hillary has a 51% negative rating. No one whose negatives were higher than 45 in January of election year has ever been elected President. So I really hope that the Democrats pick Hillary as their man.

Moving over to the "Republican" side, there are several candidates who I would strongly oppose in the primaries. If one of these candidates got the nomination I would hold my nose and vote for him, because any one of them would be better than Hillary. Rudy is a pro-abortion, pro-gun control New York liberal Republican. He did a good job as mayor of New York City, but I could not support him in the primaries. Fortunately, his candidacy seems to be self destructing.

John McCain, on the other hand, seems to be on the up-swing. I voted for McCain for Senate back when I lived in Arizona, but since then he has decided to chase after liberal votes. This has made him every Democrat's favorite Republican, but it makes us see him much as Democrats see Joe Lieberman. He always seems to be teaming up with liberal Democrats to undermine conservative principles in one way or another: infringing on free speech, blocking originalist judicial nominations, opposing tax cuts, granting amnesty to illegal immigrants, drinking the hysterical global warming alarmism Kool-Aid, opposing drilling for oil in ANWR, and the list goes on... McCain seems to be gaining traction, propelled by a fawning media and their myth that he is the only Republican who can beat Hillary.

The race for the GOP nomination seems to be coming down to a long, drawn-out battle of attrition, in which the outcome may not be clear until very late, possibly even until the convention. I find this to be delicious. The last thing I want is a coronation where the outcome is determined by New Hampshire and a few other early primary states. I expect that soon it will be clear that this is a fight for delegates between Mitt Romney and John McCain.

Which brings me down to my endorsement. As a matter of principle, I will support the most conservative viable candidate. There is no question in my mind that Mitt Romney is that man. His track record, both in the private sector and as governor of Massachusetts, indicates that he is capable both of winning the election and serving as an outstanding President. I am not bothered by the allegation that years ago he took a "pro-choice" position on abortion, because he clearly corrected that mistake a decade ago. His business experience and his economic policy indicate that he is more than up to the task of countering the Democrat's strategy of running on the economy. His track record proves that he will not appoint liberal activist judges, but will instead appoint judges who will stick to their duty of interpreting what the Constitution actually says. I even hold out some hope that he will bring some fiscal restraint to Washington. As the only candidate to use the term "War on Islamofascism" I believe that he understands the importance of defeating Islamic extremists who seek to murder and destroy in their quest to spread lawlessness and tyranny.

I hesitated to support Mitt Romney because he is a Mormon, and we have vast differences in what we believe about God and who Jesus Christ is. But I have come to recognize that we can disagree on that without it making him any less capable of being a great President.

So today I proudly announce that I support Mitt Romney for President of the United States.

Still too many

The Guttmacher Institute, the propoganda branch of Planned Parenthood, America's biggest abortion provider, reports today that the number of abortions performed in 2005 was 1.2 million, the lowest level since 1974, and down 25% from the peak of 1.6 million in 1990.

To put this number in perspective, 1.2 million people is roughly the population of Dallas, Texas, the ninth largest city in America.

It breaks down to 3,287 abortions a day. In other words, abortion kills more people here in America each and every day of the year than the 19 terrorists killed in the worst terror attack in history, when they crashed airliners into the two towers of the World Trade Center, and into the Pentagon.

Every 26 seconds another baby is killed, sucked into a garbage disposal, and thrown away.

In the 36 years since the Supreme Court invented a "right to privacy" making abortion legal, 54 million babies have been aborted in America.

While 1.2 million is somewhat better than 1.6 million, it is still 1.2 million too many.

Georgia on my mind

Last week the boys were out of school so we went to Atlanta to see family.

Going to Georgia means driving through Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. At some points in there I thought I was in a different country. You can’t throw a rock without hitting a Waffle House, and most of the billboards are for casinos or other gambling establishments. I stopped at a gas station in Alabama, and as I was going in, a redneck with 3 teeth and a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon was coming out. He eyed me and my wife suspiciously and said “Ya’ll ain’t from ‘round here, is you? [multiple sic]” I’m not sure what gave us away.

Atlanta is a contradiction of a city. Huge, jammed with traffic far worse even than Dallas, loaded with history and culture. They have the best aquarium I have ever been to. They are rightfully proud of Martin Luther King Jr. We visited his home and Ebenezer Baptist Church.

They are proud to have hosted the 1996 Olympics. They are also inexplicably proud of Jimmy Carter. I stood outside of the Carter Library and tried to get people to sign a petition to require that any sentence containing Jimmy Carter’s name also include the word “hapless.” It didn’t go over well. I guess that if you only have one president from your state, you take what you can get. Kind of like Arkansas, only they kicked the guy out.

But for all their pride in MLK, if you drive 15 miles east from downtown Atlanta you come to Stone Mountain, where the 90-foot-high figures of Stonewall Jackson, Robert E Lee, and Jefferson Davis are carved into the side of the mountain.

The carving was started by members of “The United Daughters of the Confederacy” in conjunction with the Klan (who regularly hold rallies there), and completed by the “Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial Advisory Committee” with the stated purpose of “honoring our heroes and preserving our legacy”. I never did figure out what is honorable or heroic about guys who divided a nation and fought a war which claimed 620,000 American lives in their attempt to perpetuate and expand slavery, but one certainly gets the feeling that they can't wait for the South to rise again and win the rematch in the Northern War of Aggression.

They would do better to honor their liberators: Grant, Sherman, and Lincoln.

In fact, there are plenty of people from Georgia worthy of honor: George Washington Carver, Eli Whitney, Clarence Thomas, and of course Newt Gingrich. I would certainly applaud a decision to dynamite the existing statue and replace it with the figure of Martin Luther King Jr.

Either that, or they could add the hapless Jimmy Carter and rename it “Georgia’s Hall of Shame.”

Got some change in my pocket

"We talked about change when we were up; we talked about change where we were down. This change thing must be catching on." -- B. Hussein Obama

"I am the candidate that can bring change." -- Mrs. Bill Clinton

"With Bill Richardson, you get change and you get experience. You have to have experience to change things." -- Bill Richardson

"My friends, I am most proud of the change that I brought about..." -- John McCain

"There's a tide of change sweeping New Hampshire and America" -- Mitt Romney

I can change my clothes.

I got change for a twenty.

Hey buddy, got some spare change for a cup of coffee?

My change can beat up your change!

We got some changin' goin' on over here.

What the heck does "change" mean?

It is a worthless platitude. Any politician who uses it automatically drops a couple of notches in my book. It is a way of playing on people's fears that things are going the wrong direction without having to name anything specific that you would do differently.

What are you going to do? Change!

What does that mean? Anything different than what we are doing now.

Didn't Hitler change Germany? What makes you think that change is automatically a good thing? More importantly, what makes you think that any kind of change is equal to any other kind? Are we supposed to be impressed by your arguing about who is "the candidate of change?"

In 1992, Bill Clinton used the mantra of "change" extensively, but after 8 years as VP, Clinton clone wannabe Al Gore also campaigned on a "change" platform. I fully expect to see the incumbent proclaiming herself to be the candidate of change in 2012.

Don't hide behind this empty word!

Come on, give me some substance. Tell me specifically what you are going to do. What is your vision for America and what policies are you going to implement to get us there?

No Right Angles

Following Mike Huckabee's controversial television spot in which he spoke openly of celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, while attempting to subliminally suggest a Christian message by standing in front of a book shelf, the ACLU (Anti-Christian Liberal Union) has filed an injunction in Federal Court barring the inclusion of any right angles in political advertisements.

An ACLU representative, speaking on condition of anonymity, said “We simply can not have God sneaking into our political dialogue through the use of right angles. Left angles would be just fine, but right angles certainly are excluded by the ‘separation of Church and State’ clause in the US Constitution.”

The ACLU lawyers who participated in drafting the injunction reported that they went through several iterations before arriving at a satisfactory definition of “right angles”. They settled on language which permits angles only if they are less than 70 or more than 110 degrees. Previous language was rejected when it was discovered that it would preclude the use of both the “hammer and sickle” logo and the “star and crescent” symbol, icons of the Hillary Klinton and B Hussein Obama campaigns respectively.

In search of global warming

Last week, the MS Explorer took to the seas with 154 passengers to search out signs of global warming.

Today, the ship rests on the floor of the Arctic Ocean, spewing oil and diesel fuel into the pristine polar environment, miring an untold number of helpless baby seals and polar bear cubs and creating a carbon footprint that rivals Al Gore's.

Fortunately, all of the passengers and crew were rescued before the ship sank last Friday.

The media headlines read "Cruise ship sinks". None are fretting about the ecological impact of this shipwreck. There are no estimates of the number of thousands of gallons of petroleum leaked into the ocean or the number of fish, seals, or whales killed. In fact, the media was strangely silent about the fact that this cruise ship was owned by Al Gore's buddy and fellow environmental wacko Bruce Poon Tip.

Tip, CEO of G.A.P. Adventures, regularly offers cruises to the Arctic Ocean to observe the melting polar ice resulting from global warming.

Of course the media does not reveal the most ironic aspect of the sinking of the MS Explorer. What caused the gaping hole in the side of the Explorer which caused it to founder and sink as they searched for signs of melting polar ice? They hit an iceberg.

Scary movies

In America, Halloween is ranked second among all of the holidays in dollars spent on holiday celebrations.

That puts Halloween ahead of Easter, when we celebrate Jesus victory over sin and death, ahead of Independence Day when we celebrate freedom and liberty, and ahead of Thanksgiving when we express our thanks to God for the innumerable blessings he showers on us.

So what is the significance of this last day of October? What is the compelling message that leads Americans to consider this day a higher priority than Jesus resurrection? The message is simple: "Boo!". Yeah, that's it. "Boo!"

It is traditional to watch a scary movie today. Blood, gore, a guy with blades on his fingers jumping out and making you scream, psychos, evil villains, undead, zombies, chainsaws, hockey masks, and people meeting an untimely demise are common themes in these films. I don't watch many of these films, but I do admit to enjoying "Silence of the Lambs" and "Psycho".

Tonight, in keeping with this tradition, I am going to watch a real bone-chiller, perhaps the most frightening movie of them all: Waco: Rules of Engagement.

What makes it particularly horrific is that the sequel is apparently on the way.

Your tax money at work

Dallas City Hall is launching a new billboard campaign against saggy pants.

Granted, wearing your pants down on your hips with your underwear sticking out looks dumb. But of all the things they could spend our tax money on, why that?

Seriously.

What makes the Newsboys so good?

Last weekend we drove down to Austin to see the Newsboys in concert. The Newsboys are a Christian band from Australia who have been around for just about as long as U2. Unlike U2, they have not lost their original greatness, as they continue to add to their 6 gold records. Their name sums up who they are and what they are about. "Gospel" means "Good News" and their purpose is to spread the news of Jesus Christ.

So what is it that makes the Newsboys so good?

They are extremely talented musically. Watching Peter Furler go from guitar to bass to drums, all while singing in his own gravelly style is remarkable. But there are lots of talented acts out there.

Their concerts are lots of fun. The high-tech lighting and video make it an amazing experience. And who can argue with upside-down dueling drums and Captain Crunch fights? But their greatness is not just in their entertainment value.

In my opinion, what makes the Newsboys uniquely great is one man who does not even appear on stage. His name is Steve Taylor, and he writes most of the lyrics. I listened to Steve Taylor's solo work way back in the day. He was something of a firebrand, belting out confrontational lines such as "You're so open-minded that your brain leaked out." My favorite song from his solo career is called "Bad Rap", and it includes this verse:

You save the whales, you save the seals,
You save whatever's cute and squeals.
But you kill that "thing" that's in the womb
Would not want no baby boom
Good, bad, laugh and scorn
Blame yourself for kiddie porn
Convenience is the law you keep
And your compassion's ankle deep.

Who ya tryin' to kid, kid?
Wrap it in a fine philosophy.
Who ya tryin' to kid, kid?
But your bottom line still says "me, me, me"
Got your heads together now?
Got a way that's better now?
Who ya tryin' to kid, kid?

Steve Taylor has written dozens of songs for the Newsboys, and I wish that I could share a whole bunch of them with you. We could discuss how he uses a song about Breakfast to show how we don't mourn like those who have no hope, or how he uses plays on sounds and names in a song about how our lives and words must point people to Jesus. But to really do them justice, you'll have to sit down with the lyric sheet, listen to the music, and get lost in the wit and genius of a great songwriter, but most importantly appreciate how he uses his gift to bring glory to God.

Circular arguments

Scientists say that they have "taken a baby step in trying to answer the cosmic question of where we come from. "

Their answer: dust.

"In the end, everything comes from space dust," said Markwick-Kemper of the University of Manchester in England.

But where does the dust come from?

The Spitzer Space Telescope was used to address that question. Astronomers used the telescope to find and identify a large amount of recently-formed space dust in the wind bursting out of a massive black hole 8 billion light years from here. They used the wavelengths of light coming from the quasar to determine the makeup: glass, sand, crystal, marble, ruby, and sapphire.

Ok, so where do black holes come from? They are the remnants of massive stars which have burned themselves out and collapsed under their own gravitation into a dimensionless point.

And where did the original star come from? Well, from space dust of course. It's that old chicken and egg problem all over again. You need dust to make stars and you need stars to make dust, so where did it start in the first place?

When science starts with the assumption that there is no God, it rejects the only possible first cause. Science, in its true form, is an investigation into the creative work of God. The Bible says that "you are dust, and to dust you shall return," but it also says who made the very matter of the dust out of nothing. God made it, and until scientists acknowledge that fact they are only running in circles.

The Pledge

Fifty Boulder Colorado High School students walked out of class today to protest the Pledge of Allegiance and it's phrase for which this blog is named: "one nation under God".

I could go into a rant about public education and the fallacy that the Constitution includes a "separation of Church and state." But I'd rather talk about that phrase which engenders such controversy. Saying that we are one nation under God is not a religious statement, and it does not depend in any way on one's personal opinions or beliefs. It is a simple statement of fact, and its truth doesn't change if you refuse to acknowledge it. It is true whether I believe in Jesus, Allah, Buddha, Diversity, Wicca, Mother Earth, Harvey the Rabbit, or Darwin. How can that be? Simple. Truth is not a function of what I think. It exists independent of my opinion or belief. Regardless of how sincerely or fervently I believe that the Earth is flat, that doesn't make it so.

"One nation under God" is much more of a statement about God than it is about America. We are under God because God is over all, not because we are somehow special or better or more deserving than any other nation. Ultimately, every nation is under God, and the time is coming when every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord. But why wait? Those who acknowledge God and honor Him experience the blessing of being in His will, while those who defiantly refuse to acknowledge God's sovereignty are missing out on that blessing and instead will experience God's wrath and judgment. Each of us has that choice: life or death, blessing or cursing. Which are you picking? For me, I choose life. And I pray that America makes the same choice.

Flatland

In 1884, an English clergyman and teacher wrote a fascinating little book called Flatland, telling the tale of a resident of two-dimensional Flatland, mathematician A. Square. Mr. Square describes what it is like to live in a two-dimensional world and details the workings of their society, where women are thin, straight lines, the lowliest of shapes, and men have various number of sides, depending on their social status. Irregular shapes are looked down upon as inferior, with sharply pointed triangles being the lowest form for a male. These dangerously-shaped men are suited only for life as a soldier, the most degrading of occupations. Regular polygons are highly respectable members of society, the more sides, the better. Mr. Square tells about how these inhabitants of Flatland recognize each other and interact as they go about their lives without any concept of a direction that is "up, but not north".

Then one day, A. Square encounters something he has never seen before: a shape which has no sides at all, but appears to curve smoothly. Even more remarkably, it seems to grow larger or smaller and sometimes disappear entirely, only to reappear somewhere else. As Mr. Square interacts with this amazing creature, he comes to understand that it is a sphere, a three-dimensional creature existing outside of the plane which had defined his entire existence. Mr. Square tried to explain this third dimension to the other inhabitants of Flatland, but they derided him as crazy. This third dimension was beyond their experience or ability to understand, so they concluded that it could not exist.

It occurred to me that trying to understand God is like an inhabitant of Flatland trying to imagine a sphere. God exists outside of time and space. After all, he created them. He pre-existed this universe, and He will continue on after it comes to an end. Just as the sphere could look down on Flatland and see what was happening inside a closed room, God is not bound by the constraints of time and space as we are. He is all-present in time just as He is all-present in space. He does not need to look ahead to see the future. He is already there.

As humans we try to impose our tiny vision and short-sighted wisdom on God, saying "If God were good and loving, he would do things MY way." How foolish of us to think that we know better than God! How presumptuous to think that we can wrap our finite minds around His infinite being. It is unsettling to not fully understand why God acts as He does, but sometimes we must accept that while we don't know the reasons, we trust God and know that His ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts, and that He is ultimately in control.

Britney is lame, the sky is blue

There is some kind of big uproar because Britney Spears crashed and burned in her performance at the VMA. I was just curious enough to watch the video of her "disastrous" performance. I have seen her perform before, and each song consists of a meaningless hook repeated a zillion times while she undulates around the stage in almost no clothing. In her VMA performance she repeated a meaningless hook a zillion times while she undulated around the stage in almost no clothing. Her pop star status clearly has a lot less to do with any alleged musical talent and more to do with her trademark belly-button wiggle move. What I fail to grasp is not why this performance is considered to be bad, but rather why it is any worse than any of her other performances.

Marry your cellmate?

A friend directed my attention to a web site which claims to "Assist those following the Biblical tradition of arranging marriages for their Daughters." The site, which I will not draw further attention to by naming, lists underage girls "for sale" as brides. They say that the idea is for parents to list their daughter, her age, photo, and description along with a "bride price". Men can click the "Propose" button to offer to pay the family for the opportunity to marry the daughter. They list Bible references mentioning arranged marriages and paying the "bride price" to the father in exchange for the daughter's hand in marriage.

So essentially you have a web site trafficking in underage girls sold for sex, claiming to be a Christian operation.

But as I looked at the site, there were several red flags which screamed "fake!"

The listings themselves appear to be written to entice pedophiles. The photos couldn't possibly be real -- they look like photos from a teen model contest. And the testimonials are just far too outlandish to be real.

Here is one sample ad, name removed to protect the innocent.

*****’s grandmother married at 13, her mother married at 13, and ***** has decided she wants to keep the tradition going. She would prefer to stay close to her large extended southern family and loves farm or at least rural life. She got an A in Home Economics and has read up on what else would be expected of her as a wife and is looking forward to it.

Notice the thinly-veiled reference to this child being eager for sex. In most of the ads, sexual availability is implied, although carefully never stated.

Here is one of the "Testimonials"

My mother thought I was getting ‘too frisky” and that I had to get married right away before I lost my purity to some high school boy. They found me a husband and my parents were able to keep their house and pay off my mother’s medical bills. I was so glad I could help them, and being married at my age (I'm 16 now) has a lot of advantages, like my own credit card!

Again, suggesting that these girls are just dying to have sex with some older man.

As I looked further through the web site, it mentions that only men living in the United States can use the service. Supposedly this is because they need to follow up on the satisfaction of their customers, and it is just too hard to do that outside of this country. More likely, they only have jurisdiction in the US so they don't want to deal with men in other countries.

They specify that only adult men may "Propose", and all of the girls listed are underage. It is clearly set up to create an illegal situation, but the "Frequently asked questions" list says that it is all legal.

But here is the real ringer.

The web site's html code includes "search engine fodder" designed to bring in traffic from people searching for certain phrases. These key words are inserted into the web page source by the creators in hopes of attracting certain people to their site. So what does this sites key words indicate about who they are hoping to bring to their web site?

Here is a partial listing of the key words:

forced child slave prostitute hooker whore escort teen sexy sex childwatch naked abuse pervert preteen toy buy money sold young single horror polygamy rape slavery hot blonde brunette redhead 13 14 15 16 17 underage illegal teenage delinquent juvenile foreclosure virgin escort

It does not exactly prove that this is a sting operation, but it does prove beyond any doubt that the intentions are not Christian in any way, even in the misguided sense that they claim. It may be a Department of Justice sting operation, or it might be a site trafficking in underage girls for money. I'm leaning towards thinking that it is a sting, but I reported the site to the DOJ Center for Missing & Exploited Minors just to be safe. But either way, what bothers me is that they claim to run this sick operation based on the Bible. The Bible does not command or even endorse arranged marriages, and it absolutely does not condone violating societal standards or laws regarding the proper age for marriage or sexual relations, and the concept of selling a daughter is completely reprehensible by Biblical standards.

So if it is a sting, please don't claim to use the Bible in your operation!

Update: This web site was a hoax, not a sting or a real operation.

I won the lottery!

There is the old joke about the guy who keeps praying that God will let him win the lottery, and he doesn't win and doesn't win. And finally God tells him "Help me out here. Buy a ticket."

My stand is that if it is God's will for me to win the lottery, He has no trouble providing the ticket. Buying a lottery ticket is a loosing proposition, and therefore is poor stewardship of the money that God has blessed us with.

Today the news reports that four people won the $330 million MegaMillions jackpot, including one person here in Texas. A $330 million payoff on odds of 1 in 176 million sounds like a pretty good deal. What you won't hear them trumpeting so loudly is that no one of those people will walk away with anything remotely close to $330 million. The cash value of the jackpot is $190 million. Split four ways, they each get $47.5 million. But the government, as they hold out that money with one hand, grab back 28% of it with the other hand in taxes, leaving $34 million, or about ten percent of the advertised payout. Spending a dollar for a 1 in 176 shot at $34 million doesn't sound like such a great deal, does it? Not that $34 million is anything to sneeze at. But when you consider that people spent $600 million chasing that jackpot it seems like a case of mass hysteria.

The real winners are those who didn't buy into it. Like me.

Vick finds Jesus

"We all make mistakes," said Michael Vick. "Dogfighting is a terrible thing and I reject it ... I found Jesus and turned my life over to God. I think that's the right thing to do as of right now."

I'm not going to speculate here about whether this is a genuine decision or a calculated sympathy ploy. The timing is suspicious, but that's a matter known only by God and Mr. Vick.

What I can say with complete certainty is that it came a bit late. No one is beyond the reach of God's grace. Just look at Saul, who hunted down and killed Christians before meeting Jesus and being transformed by God into a great missionary. But if Vick had been similarly transformed a year or two ago through a genuine, life-changing encounter with the Living God, his life would be very different today.

Some people think that being a Christian is just about going to heaven when you die, but they are missing out on the fact that eternal life starts the moment you accept Christ as your savior, and at that moment God takes your old messed up life and supernaturally turns it around into something exceptionally good. Living life today in fellowship with God is just as much a benefit of salvation as going to heaven when I die.

I am thankful that God saved me when I was young, because He spared me from many of the stupid choices that people make when they try to live without Him.

The truth about Michael Vick will be seen in his life ten years from now. But how much better would it be if he had turned his life over to God ten years ago, and not had to lose so much to be forced to "find Jesus" in prison, watching his NFL career crumble before his eyes?

It is wise to learn from other people's mistakes, because it helps you to avoid making them all yourself. Perhaps Michael Vick could have avoided this calamity in his personal life by learning from other people's experience. And maybe you can learn from Michael Vick's experience. Don't wait until your life is ruined to turn to God. Do it now. Ask Jesus to be your Savior and Lord, and allow Him to turn you into a new creation. Do it today.

Bush did it

President Bush is to blame for a lot of bad stuff that has happened in the past years.

He pulled some strings to get Katrina to hit New Orleans, right in the spot where a bunch of environmentalist wackos prevented the Corp of Engineers from building a better sea wall. And if that's not enough, Al Sharpton says that Bush actually put dynamite under the levies to make sure that they would fail.

Bush caused the I-35 bridge to collapse into the Mississippi river in Minneapolis.

And Bush lied and got all of our dumb troops stuck in Iraq to profit his contractor buddies. That certainly was not about terrorism -- after all, Bush was behind 9/11 too!

But this one tops them all.

Now we have the bombshell revelation that President Bush got a 20-year-old pregnant and denied her the entitlement of drinking mai tais on a tropical beach.

A 20-year-old Illinois college student is whining because she won’t be able to vacation in Costa Rica, because she got pregnant, because she couldn’t get birth control anymore, because it cost $20-a-month more at the university clinic, because its federal funding was cut, because President George Bush signed the Deficit Reduction Act.

I can't make this stuff up, folks. The Chicago Sun-Times reports that

Last spring, 20-year-old pre-med student Elizabeth Harris had only Costa Rica on her mind. She was hoping to wine and dine there while taking a few biology courses.
But the Waukegan native and University of Illinois at Chicago junior had to skip her trip. Having gone off birth control, Harris found she was pregnant. She said she quit when the cost of her prescription at the UIC clinic more than doubled. "[The price] steered me away," said Harris. "I don't blame them [UIC], but I might not be in the situation I am in now."

The cost of Harris’ birth control -- NuvaRing, a monthly contraceptive, at the UIC clinic was $35, up from $15. “She said that even though UIC provides free condoms she would only use them ‘once in a while.’ Other times she and her partner were feeling spontaneous and ‘it just happened,’ she explained”.

The story portrays Harris as the helpless victim of Bush's budget cuts and makes the case for more Federal funding of birth control: “Harris, coming from a low-income home, said she cannot afford to pay so much more for birth control.”

Sure. And what is the cost of the cell phone she was shown holding in the newspaper photo? She could afford a trip to Costa Rica, but couldn't afford $35 for birth control? Maybe if she can’t afford to protect herself, she should -- perish the thought -- abstain from sex.

How does anyone get the idea that taxpayers are required to pay for her birth control? That spontaneous sex excuses reckless behavior? That extra-marital sex is no problem, ethically or morally?

This is not just a case of one girl publicly sticking her foot in her mouth over her irresponsible behavior. It reflects a society which has lost its mind.

Two years

Two years ago today I launched "One Nation Under God" onto the internet with great fanfare. Since then, I have taken the blogosphere by storm, accumulating almost a dozen avid readers. In memory of the two year anniversary of this blog, I am going to repost the guiding principles I laid out two years ago. I believe that they apply now as much as ever, and I believe that each of the 161 posts in this blog have worked to advance these principles.

1. America is great in spite of its government, not because of it
2. The earth is not fragile. Capitalism is not a threat to the environment.
3. Without the Second Amendment, the rest of the Bill of Rights is meaningless.
4. Budget deficits are caused by excessive spending, not insufficient taxation.
5. Parents are responsible for raising their kids, not villages and certainly not Hillary Clinton or the Federal Government.
6. Entrusting your retirement to the stock market is less risky than entrusting it to Congress.
7. Terrorism is an evil which must be wiped out, not appeased.
8. Most of the things that Congress does are outside of its Constitutional authority.
9. Free Market forces are better at improving society than government regulations.
10. Subsidizing irresponsibility is a very bad policy.

Vick's mistake

Michael Vick, star NFL quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons, is looking more and more guilty of the charges that he not only participated in the barbaric "sport" of dog fighting, but that he also exercised extreme cruelty in killing poor-performing dogs in inexcusably inhumane ways.

But what really stands out to me is the stupidity of this case. Its not just that this guy was making $13 million per year on a ten-year NFL contract, and he threw it all away for less money than he made in a week. It is pretty clear that Michael Vick was not into dog fighting just for the money. He got a sick thrill out of torturing, mutilating, and killing.

And that is where Vick's ultimate stupidity shows through. Michael Vick chose the wrong victims to take out his viscous tendencies upon. He picked dogs -- animals who society hold up as cute cuddly pets. Animals upon which the animal rights movement has bestowed rights and protections on the same level as adult humans. In fact, the outrage in this case seems more far-reaching than the outrage over American citizens tortured and murdered by terrorists.

Michael Vick should have been more selective in choosing his victims. Instead of dogs, Vick should have unleashed his violence on a group which society has reduced far below human level -- one which no one will care about, no one will be outraged over, no one will defend. He should have taken up dismembering a form of life so low that the death and carnage will seem commonplace.

Michael Vick should have chosen a hobby of ripping unborn babies limb from limb. It would have satisfied his sick blood lust and his thirst for profit, and we would all have yawned and gone back to watching our football. No one would have wondered why we care about dogs more than about human babies. There would be no criminal charges, no media uproar, no calls for years of incarceration. If Michael Vick were just a bit smarter he could have avoided all of this hassle, and instead of being demonized, he would be held up as a hero of the left, defended as a champion of women’s rights, and praised for having the courage to end a defenseless human life weighing less than the steak he eats for dinner.

That is the senseless stupidity in it all. All Michael Vick had to do was pick on someone who no one cared about.

The horror!

You can rest assured that this intersection in Dalhart Texas is the only place where Dodson and Liberal intersect.

Who is the artist?

Our family spent the last week in Yellowstone National Park.

We hiked through the mountains and along the brink of a mind-boggling canyon, watched the wildlife, and observed many different aspects of the interactions between rock, water, heat, and time. We saw the energy from the molten core of the earth unleashed by the Yellowstone Volcano in the form of geysers, hot springs, steam vents, and boiling mud pots. We were dwarfed by mountains formed by the collision of massive plates of the earth's crust.

At the West Thumb Geyser Basin, on the shore of Yellowstone Lake, Ranger Steve led us on a ranger-guided walk through the thermal area. A professor of geology, specializing in hydro-geothermalogy, he is highly intelligent and very qualified to discuss the scientific basis for the geysers and hot springs in that unique region.

Ranger Steve

Ranger Steve described the constant change seen in the thermal features as the work of an artist. This great artist works in the mediums of rock and water interacting with the heat from the magma intrusion of the Yellowstone Volcano. This artist's tools include earthquakes which alter the "plumbing" system deep in the earth, thermophile bacteria perfectly adapted to feed off of the energy of the scalding water and convert the sulfur into sulfuric acid, and the occasional cataclysmic volcanic eruption which "wipes the slate clean" so that the artist can begin an entirely new masterpiece of creativity.

As you experience Yellowstone, it is easy to see it as the work of a great artist. However, when Ranger Steve identified the artist, he got it completely wrong. He said that the artist whose creativity was seen at Yellowstone was “Mother Earth.” But the earth screams with signs of an active creativity, intentional design, a purposeful application of power, and a delight in beauty and variety of creation. None of these are traits of a chunk of rock orbiting a star in the outer fringes of an inconsequential spiral galaxy. Creation is evidence of the existence of a creator. Design points to a designer. Purpose is proof of a higher intellect directing the course of existence.

The artist of Yellowstone is not an impersonal one. Even Ranger Steve admits this by personifying the earth with the name “Mother”. But the earth and the forces of nature which Ranger Steve lifts up as the artist are themselves the creations of God. If you exclude the possibility of God as the source of creation, then Ranger Steve’s naturalistic view of Yellowstone being a product of chance is the only option left, but that doesn’t make it scientifically sound. There is nothing scientific about rejecting the one explanation which best fits the observed facts without any basis other than a refusal to admit the existence of a creator with the authority to define moral boundaries.

Only God could be the great artist of Yellowstone, artist of the universe, and artist of our lives. An honest look at Yellowstone confirms without a question the truth of God’s existence, his role as creator, and his continued care for his creation. Everywhere I looked I saw proof of God’s greatness. I am awed to serve a God who could conceive of the things I witnessed, intelligent enough to design them to work in such perfect harmony, powerful enough to create them by his Word alone, and loving enough to let me experience the results of his creativity.

Changing my name

I have decided that if the list of options for the Republican nomination remains unchanged, I will change my name to "None of the Above" and declare myself to be a candidate. Now if Fred Thompson or Newt joins the race, that would be another matter.

But look at our current choices.

We have a New York abortion supporter who supports gun control. His claim to fame was his response in the days after 9/11, which was indeed admirable. He also has a good record of cutting taxes, fighting crime, and greatly reducing the welfare roles in his home state. I'd vote for him over Hillary in a moment, but I'd sooner switch parties than vote for him in the primary.

Then there is that idiot from my former home state. I voted for him for the Senate, but that was before he got presidential aspirations and started vying for the middle-of-the-road vote. These days he teams up with people like Ted Kennedy and Russ Feingold to bring us horrible bills like the campaign finance travesty and the amnesty bill for illegal aliens, and to undercut President Bush's excellent judicial nominations.

Right now, the best of the "top tier" candidates is Mitt Romney. I would vote for a true conservative Mormon before I would vote for, say, a liberal "Baptist" former governor of Arkansas who doesn't inhale. But I am not sure that Mitt is a true conservative at heart. He knows the right things to say, but his track record of actual accomplishments is not that solid.

Surely this is not the best we have got.

I would love for Newt to get into this race. Newt is a true conservative revolutionary. Some people think that is a contradiction, but Newt excels at generating new ideas based on solid free-market conservative principles. His plan for "Winning the Future" is full of innovative ideas which, like his Contract with America, will really work and bring about the right kind of change. I recognize that Newt is one of the most vilified people in America, but that is really because he was so effective as Speaker of the House. If Newt runs, he's my man.

Fred Thompson is a close second. He is not a revolutionary like Newt, but he is 100% solid as a conservative. Everyone loves Fred right now, but I think that it may be a honeymoon phase. He has some baggage, too. And while he is right on in terms of issues and positions, suggestions that he is the next Ronald Reagan are certainly overblown.

So encourage Newt or Fred to throw their hat into the ring, or get ready to vote "None of the Above".

Vote of no confidence

Six months after taking control of Congress, the Democrats have accomplished little or none of their stated objectives, and the public is responding.

In a Gallop Poll released on June 21, 2007, the public's confidence in Congress is at an all-time low of 14%. Gallop polled 1,009 adults on their confidence in 16 different institutions. The military received the highest vote of confidence, with 69% of the respondents expressing high confidence. The Democratic Congress, which has spent most of its time staging symbolic nonbinding resolutions, denying funds to our troops, investigating legitimate firings, and grandstanding on topics like the minimum wage, tax increases, and embryonic stem cells, was ranked dead last.

Lower than HMOs.

And eleven points lower than the President.

I would say that this indicates that the Democrats have misread the message sent in the last election. Let's hope that Republicans can get their act together, find a solid candidate or two, and get back on message in time for 2008. The door is open.

Good news and bad news

This is a follow-up to Tuesday's post about Lockheed promoting "Gay Pride Month".

Wednesday morning, the banner was removed from the web site. HR indicated that they received a flood of protest. However, they did not acknowledge that removing the banner was a result of the complaints. Normally these "special announcements" stay up for two or three weeks. This one lasted 48 hours.

The company issued an official statement:

The recognition of Pride Month on InSite is not intended to endorse or promote anything. Just like the prior "special announcements" of Black History Month, Women's History Month, Asian-Pacific Heritage Month, and National Day of Prayer, we are acknowledging widely recognized days and months.

We certainly understand that not all employees will relate to all of these events. Nevertheless, we feel it is entirely appropriate to provide the information, which we do in an objective, straightforward way.

Ralph and I appreciate and respect your opinion. You absolutely have the personal right to disagree with the content of the posting. We will, however, continue to inform our employees of widely recognized events focused on diversity and inclusion. Our intent is to ensure that all employees have the opportunity to feel accepted and welcome in the workplace.

This statement is flawed in several ways.

First of all, when you use the word "Pride" you are making a value judgment, not an objective delivery of information.

Secondly, if you are familiar with the history of the Stonewall Riots, you will know that this violent attack on police officers is a far cry from the non-violent social action of Martin Luther King, and is not something that Lockheed Martin should be celebrating.

Third, Gay Pride is not analogous to Black History Month or Hispanic Heritage Month. The rich cultural and ethnic backgrounds of the employees at Lockheed Martin is something worthy of celebration, but lifestyle choices about who people have sex with is a private matter, not something we should have our noses rubbed in.

But we will make sure that they acknowledge red-blooded American Christian occasions. They gave their word.

Oxymoron

Remember Lockheed, the great All-American company dedicated to protecting and defending our freedom by producing the most dominant fighter jets in the sky? Take a look at what recently showed up on our internal web page, the one that tens of thousands of employees see every day:

This is brought to us by our Fort Worth Diversity Council, you know, the one that excluded me as a member. The banner is a link to a promotion of “National Gay Pride Month”. I know that today's society says to be proud of things that ought to be shameful. But I didn’t think that Lockheed would stoop to this kind of thing. I am guessing that someone said “Hey, you have Hispanic Heritage Month and Black Heritage Month, so why don’t you celebrate Gay Pride Month? We feel excluded!” But certainly they recognize that these are not analogous. Hispanic Heritage Month is a celebration of the different cultural and ethnic backgrounds of our employees, not lifestyle choices about who people have sex with. I think that ought to be a personal matter.

Lockheed has established the standard that anything offensive is not permitted. That policy covers email, internet content, posters, and speech. So I can’t send out non-business related emails using company assets if someone might be offended by them, and I can’t put up potentially offensive posters in my office. But I know that a lot of people find this promotion of “Gay Pride Month” to be offensive. I do. So I sent an email to management saying that I find it offensive. They can’t argue with that and say that I don’t feel that way. So all that remains is to see if they comply with their own policy.

A Glimpse Inside Don's Mind

Chicken wearing a purple wig
Monkey polkas with a pig

Horses flying in the sky
Putting makeup on his eye

Elevator full of paisley fish
Ask you for your Christmas wish

Pickup trucks with lettuce waltz
Shiny lobsters with no faults

Silly little peaches sing
As they soar on silky wing

Melancholy oysters hop
In circles as the floor they mop

Lemons eating split-pea soup
Snorkel in a chicken coup

Neon pansies jumping rope
Soon go golfing with the pope

Bulldozers are playing chess
With a lawnmower wearing a dress

Octopus with red bow-tie
Flies a kite up in the sky

Pickle floating in a shoe
Asks a skunk "How do you do?"

So you think this is bizarre?
The truth is more strange by far

To the mother of my sons

King Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, described an excellent wife far more eloquently than I could manage. My own attempts to describe my wife would certainly fall far short, so I dedicate these words to my wonderful wife, my partner, my love, and the mother of my three sons.

An excellent wife, who can find?
For her worth is far above jewels.
The heart of her husband trusts in her,
And he will have no lack of gain.
She does him good and not evil
All the days of her life.
She looks for wool and flax
And works with her hands in delight.
She is like merchant ships;
She brings her food from afar.
She rises also while it is still night
And gives food to her household.
She considers a field and buys it;
From her earnings she plants a vineyard.
She girds herself with strength
And makes her arms strong.
She senses that her gain is good;
Her lamp does not go out at night.
She extends her hand to the poor,
And she stretches out her hands to the needy.
She is not afraid of the snow for her household,
For all her household are clothed with scarlet.
She makes coverings for herself;
Her clothing is fine linen and purple.
Strength and dignity are her clothing,
And she smiles at the future.
She opens her mouth in wisdom,
And the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.
She looks well to the ways of her household,
And does not eat the bread of idleness.
Her children rise up and bless her;
Her husband also, and he praises her, saying:
"Many daughters have done nobly,
But you excel them all."
Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain,
But a woman who fears the LORD, she shall be praised.

Alec Baldwin

Last week Alec Baldwin left a scathing, vitriolic, profanity-laced, threatening answering machine message for his 11-year-old daughter Ireland.

Here is what he had to say:

Hey I want to tell you something, ok? And I want to leave a message for you right now because it is 10:30 here in New York on a Wednesday and once again I made an ass of myself trying to get to a phone to call you at a specific time. When the time comes for me to make the phone call I stop whatever I am doing and I go and I make that phone call at 11 o’clock in the morning in New York and if you don’t pick up the phone, at 10 o’clock at night. And you don’t even have the God damned phone turned on. And I want you to know something, ok? I am tired of playing this game with you. I am leaving this message to tell you: you have insulted me for the last time. You have insulted me. You don’t have the brains or the decency as a human being. I don’t give a damn that you are 12 years old or 11 years old or that you’re a child or that your mother is a thoughtless pain in the ass who doesn’t care about what you do as far as I’m concerned. You have humiliated me for the last time with this phone. And when I come out there next week I’m going to fly out there for the day just to straighten you out on this issue. I’m going to let you know just how disappointed in you I am and how angry I am with you that you have done this to me again. You’ve made me feel like shit and you made me feel like a fool over and over and over again. And this crap you pull on me with this God damned phone situation that you would never dream of doing to your mother and you do it to me constantly and over and over again. I am going to get on a plane or I am going to come out there for the day and I am going to straighten your ass out when I see you, do you understand me? I am going to really make sure you get it. Then I’m going to turn around and I’m going to come home, so you’d better be ready Friday the 20th to meet with me because I’m going to let you know just how I feel about what a rotten little pig you are. You are a rude thoughtless little pig, ok?

Baldwin and Basinger have been locked in a brutal custody and visitation battle over Ireland for years, and it is safe to say that the nastiness is not limited to Baldwin. Basinger is using her daughter as a weapon against Baldwin. People are lining up to bash Baldwin for his horrible parenting, for his verbal abusiveness against his daughter, and even for not knowing how old she is. A few others like “Men’s News Daily” magazine are coming to Baldwin’s defense. I don’t think very highly of Alec Baldwin, who seems very arrogant, self-absorbed, and self-important, and has demonstrated an instability and inability to control his temper on a number of other occasions. The tirade reveals the depth of the Hollywood egotism, the “world revolves around me” mentality that leads him to feel so incredibly put out when he stops what he is doing to call his daughter. Can you blame her for not answering? I would have blocked his number if I was in her situation.

But this is not a men-versus-women issue or a Baldwin-versus-Basinger issue. This ugly, indefensible rant reveals the nature of divorce. Divorce is a destructive, evil practice which rips homes apart and hurts everyone involved. The worst part of divorce comes when kids are involved. The kids are not at fault for the divorce, but they are caught in the middle of a tug-of-war caused by the parent’s selfishness. I understand that there are a few cases where divorce is a necessary evil. If one spouse is physically abusing the other or abusing the kids, the other spouse has the obligation to end that situation by any means necessary, including divorce. Irreconcilable infidelity is also legitimate grounds for divorce. But even in these cases, divorce is the lesser of two evils.

In Malachi 2:16 God says “I hate divorce.” Now we know that God is love, so anything he hates he must hate out of his love for us. God’s hatred of divorce is based in his love for the people who he created in his own image. The preceding verses reveal why God hates divorce:

…because you have broken faith with her, though she is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant.

Marriage is a covenant instituted by God thru which God takes a man and a woman and joins them to be one flesh. (Genesis 2:24) Jesus commanded that no man should separate what God has brought together. He was not just making arbitrary rules. He was speaking in love, to prevent little 11-year-old girls from getting evil, nasty voicemails from their dads.

In Ephesians 5:28-29 Paul wrote:

In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church.

Selfishness is the root cause of divorce. Sometimes it is one-sided selfishness, but usually there is plenty to go around from both husband and wife. But God’s plan for a loving marriage requires that we set aside our own self-interest and instead nourish and cherish our spouse. “Nourishing” means to create an environment which promotes health and growth. If I nourish my spouse, I make sure to provide all that she needs, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Cherishing my spouse means that I value her highly, as a precious treasure. How many divorces would there be if every husband, instead of thinking first about himself, devoted himself to nourishing and cherishing his wife, and if every wife did the same for her husband?

When some Pharisees asked Jesus about divorce, he summed it up perfectly:

"But at the beginning of creation God 'made them male and female. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate."

That explains a lot

There is a question which perplexed me for years.

Why do sumo wrestlers shave their legs?

I have searched for answers and struggled with the staggering philosophical and existential ramifications of this weighty matter. I have sought the council of wise and knowledgeable individuals and poured though many authoritative texts and ancient tomes seeking any insight to shed light on the deep and impenetrable mystery. But all of my efforts were futile. The answers I so diligently sought eluded me.

Then I heard that a sumo wrestling exhibition was coming to Fort Worth, and a glimmer of hope broke through the mounting frustration. As a powerful and influential member of the vast right-wing conspiracy I had no trouble getting press credentials from the media moguls I hobnob with. So armed with my Turner Broadcasting ID (Ted is a closet conservative, don’t you know?) I walked through the crowds of screaming sumo fans, past the security checkpoints, and into the back room where the wrestlers were preparing for their contests. I found one particularly large wrestler just finishing the daunting task of shaving his massive legs. As he put his Bic shaver away I asked him my most pressing question:

Why do sumo wrestlers shave their legs?

He answered: “We are tired of being mistaken for feminists.”

Intelligence analyst challenges Good Friday 'Spin'

(2007-04-06) — While Christians around the world gather for so-called “Good Friday” observances, an intelligence analyst studying primary source documents challenged the “irrational exuberance of the true believers,” and said his research to date indicates things did not go according to plan.

“At this point, you have a leader in whom a lot of people had placed their hopes, who failed miserably,” said the unnamed source who is in the process of translating and exploiting the documents. “There’s no progress — no movement at all. It’s a classic case of a bad plan, poorly executed. A rational person would ask, ‘What’s so good about it?’”

The source said that “while fanatics encourage taking a longer term hopeful view of the situation, and try to position the conflict as an epic struggle between good and evil in which good ultimately triumphs, the immediate reality on the ground shows the enemy has won, the plan lies in ruin and the way forward is blocked by an immovable obstacle. Redeployment appears to be the only viable option remaining. Any way you look at it, it’s a dark day.”

“You can call it Good Friday if you wish,” he said, “but that’s just spin. I can’t say it any clearer, ‘It is finished.’”

Draft Newt

When I think of the definition of "Conservative" one picture comes immediately into my head.

The picture is Ronald Reagan.

Next to Reagan's towering figure, none of the three leading contenders for the GOP nomination even come close to measuring up.

But there is one person who still wears the mantle of the Reagan Revolution. That person is former Speaker of the House and mastermind of the Contract with America, Newt Gingrich. This is a man who still believes in the principles of Reagan which the rest of the party is now paying the price for abandoning. Principles like limited government, lower taxes, reduced spending, free-market economy, and a strong defense. Newt is the only person on the scene with a combination of a solid ideological base, great new ideas for how conservative principles should be implemented today, and a proven track record for getting things done.

Not since Reagan himself has any man been as vilified by liberals, government establishment types, and the media. That is because Newt is dangerous to their vision of a more socialized, centrally-directed America. But Hillary has baggage too, and I think that her's will stick more than Newt's.

Visit the Draft Newt web site and read his position papers on many important issues, and if you prefer him to the existing options, register to join the Draft Newt movement. Let's get this great leader into the race!

Secrets of life

I have discovered that there are two secrets to life which assure that you will be happy, successful, prosperous, and fulfilled.

1. Never tell anyone everything that you know.

The World's Shortest Books

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT COUNTRY MUSIC
by Willie Nelson

FRENCH WAR HEROES
by Jacques Chirac

AN ENGINEER'S GUIDE TO FASHION

THINGS I LOVE ABOUT MY COUNTRY
by Jane Fonda & Cindy Sheehan.
Illustrated by Michael Moore

MY BEAUTY SECRETS
by Janet Reno

MY CHRISTIAN ACCOMPLISHMENTS & HOW I HELPED AFTER KATRINA
by Rev Jesse Jackson & Rev Al Sharpton

THINGS I LOVE ABOUT BILL
by Hillary Clinton

Sequel: THINGS I LOVE ABOUT HILLARY
by Bill Clinton

MY LITTLE BOOK OF PERSONAL HYGIENE
by Osama Bin Laden

THINGS I CANNOT AFFORD
by Bill Gates

HEALTH BENEFITS OF SMOKING
by Shane

THINGS I WOULD NOT DO FOR MONEY
by Dennis Rodman

CHOCOLATE NEW ORLEANS: A CAJUN DESSERT GUIDE
by Ray Nagin

THINGS I KNOW TO BE TRUE
by Al Gore & John Kerry

AMELIA EARHART'S GUIDE TO THE PACIFIC

WHY WE NEED A LIBERAL PRESIDENT

A COLLECTION of MOTIVATIONAL SPEECHES
by Dr. J Kevorkian

ESSENTIAL RAP MUSIC SKILLS
by Eminem

MY EXPERIENCE LEADING A NATION
by Barack Obama

ALL THE MEN I HAVE LOVED BEFORE
by Ellen de Generes & Rosie O'Donnel

BENEFITS OF DEFEAT IN IRAQ
by Harry Reid

GUIDE TO DATING ETIQUETTE
by Mike Tyson

THE AMISH PHONE DIRECTORY

LIMITS TO MY AMBITION
by Hillary Clinton

MY PLAN TO FIND THE REAL KILLERS
by O.J. Simpson

HOW TO DRINK & DRIVE OVER BRIDGES
by Ted Kennedy

MY PLAN TO DEFEAT TERROR
by Nancy Pelosi

Deadbeat dads

There are not many life forms on this planet lower than a parent who does not pay the required child support. Most are members of the platyhelminthes family. But there are a bunch of dads, and even a few moms, who fall into this category, and I support even the most drastic measures to extract what they owe. One big problem in collecting delinquent child support is that it is treated as a local matter, and if the deadbeat moves to a different city, there are all sorts of jurisdiction problems in collecting the money.

Today FoxNews reports that pizza delivery boxes are being used to distribute mug shots of deadbeats. The idea is that people on the run from the law don't want to get out in the open, so they order pizza. Good idea, but I think we can do better.

But it would not take a whole lot to effectively force a large percentage of these deadbeats to pay up. Here is how to do it:

Add a line on the Federal 1040 form which says: If you are currently delinquent on any child support payments, complete form XYZ and enter the unpaid balance on this line.

That amount becomes part of your tax liability, and failure to pay it is then tax fraud, a Federal crime which the IRS is quite adept at dealing with.